Battle for the Best Song History
History of the Battle for the Best Song contest, an annual contest inspired by Eurovision where countries from all around the world send a meme song to represent them. It is the largest meme song contest ever, running since 2006. Voting is done Eurovision style: the voters give 12, 10, 8, 7-1 points to their favorite songs. 2006 - Tallinn, Estonia The first contest was held in Tallinn, Estonia in 2006. There were no semi finals in this edition. The Final took place on May 13th. The winner of the first BFBS contest was Canada, with "Football Club" by Arnold Mark. 2007 - Vancouver, Canada The second BFBS took place in Vancouver after Arnold Mark took home the win in Tallinn, Estonia. The venue chosen was the "Trollface Arena", an arena mainly used for basketball games, with a capacity of 12 thousand people. The stage design was described as "futuristic and cool, almost like it came from the year 2900!" by lead designer Martin Arany. Arany was also the spokesperson for the host country, Canada in the Grand Finals. The Grand Final took place on April 30th. The winner was The Netherlands, with the song "We Are The Heroes" by the rap group BenDY. 2008 - Enschede, Netherlands The third BFBS took place in Enschede, after BenDY took the win in Vancouver, Canada. The venue chosen was the Enschede Arena, the largest area in the city of Enschede. New to the contest were Interval Acts. Teach-In, a Dutch band, performed their old 1975 song "Ding-A-Dong" in the Grand Final. However, the song had to be distorted "for meme purposes", as described by the Executive Supervisor of the contest, David French. The 2008 contest became memorable for an infamously bad performance given by the British artists, Tears for Fears. One of the dancers accidentally stabbed themselves with a knife during their performance, forcing the contest to be stopped out of the blue. The band was allowed to perform the song again later, with said dancer being replaced by Argel Fucks. The voting resulted in the smallest margin of points in the contest: India beat the host country, the Netherlands, by just one point, for first place. This means the contest was able to move to Asia for the first time. 2009 - Mumbai, India The 2009 contest was hosted in the "Land of Meme Music", India, where Dalar Mehndi, the singer of "Tunak Tunak Tun", was one of the hosts. This contest was also the first time Semi Finals were introduced. After the close of voting, it was revealed that Australia had won the contest. 2010 - Gold Coast, Australia The contest was hosted in the Slapoda Dome in Gold Coast, built for the sole purpose of hosting the contest. To open the new decade, the MBU gave the contest a motto for the first time ever: "Your Memes are No Longer Dreams". This marked the first time that a band won: The Karkat Cosplayers, a band of people cosplaying as the character Karkat Vantas from Homestuck, won the contest in the colors of the United States. 2011 - Seattle, United States The 2011 contest was hosted in Seattle, in the "DMC Arena", located five miles away from the Space Needle. This arena became famous for being built a very long time ago, and appearing in the movie Rebel With a Cause. The first Semi Final was interrupted by residents of Chicago, who protested because they wanted the contest to be hosted in the Windy City. Thankfully, the guards dealt with them. As the Interval Act for the Grand Final, The Presidents of the United States performed "God Bless the USA". The Grand Final was won by The Netherlands, who became the first country to win twice. 2012 Due to technical reasons, there wasn't a BFBS in 2012. 2013 - Zwolle, Netherlands The city of Zwolle hosted in 2013. This Contest was presented by the Japanese video game developer Polyphony Digital, and the LDS Church.